


When in a Hole Stop Digging

by fredbassett



Series: Stephen/Ryan series [110]
Category: Primeval
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-25
Updated: 2018-04-25
Packaged: 2019-04-27 21:29:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14434461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fredbassett/pseuds/fredbassett
Summary: There are times when Lester considers a) taking up a new hobby b) finding a new boyfriend and, finally, c) changing jobs. This is one of those times.





	1. Chapter 1

“Remind me again why I let you talk me into this, pumpkin?” Lester asked, forcing the words out between gritted teeth.

He was head down in a narrow passage, arms stretched out on front of him, doing his best to grab handfuls of leaves, sticks and assorted other items of flood debris that were currently preventing the free flow of water through the narrower channels beneath him.

“Because you’re noble and public spirited?” Lyle hazarded from about three metres away, shouting to make himself heard over the noise of the water.

“Nope. Try again.” Lester jammed one elbow against the rock that was pressing in around him on all sides and stuffed a thick mat of leaves into a plastic container jammed between his legs.

“Because you’re thinner than me and can get into smaller holes, oh sweetest of pygmy shrews. And because you don’t want to put up with the whinging from the good folks of Cheddar if the road ends up getting closed for three months like it did last time.”

Lyle was right on both counts. After the work they’d put in two years ago to channel the Longwood Valley stream back underground where it belonged, he was damned if he was letting an inconvenient storm wreck what they’d achieved. For two years, Longwood Valley Sink had been able to cope with the winter rains, but this year, Storm Angus had hit the Mendips hard after the driest autumn on record. More rain had fallen on the hills in six hours on Friday night than had dropped in the past three months put together. The water had promptly gathered up all the leaves and tree debris that had fallen in the stream bed and swept them down the valley, overwhelming Top Sink almost instantly and hurtling on down the valley and into LVS, as it was known to cavers, before piling up against the grill over the entrance and finally blocking access to the lower sink as well. By the look of things, Longwood Valley Sink, had withstood the worst of the flood for some while, but had finally given up the unequal struggle when the grill had become completely choked.

At that point, the water had just swirled up, overtopping the drystone wall that held back the earth bank and raced on down the rest of the valley to Cheddar Gorge to deposit a vast quantity of leaves, wood, and gravel across the tarmac. It had also undermined the road on both sides. The police had done the only thing possible and closed the road.

Lester and Lyle had driven down from the ARC through the worst of the storm, and only Lyle’s expert driving had kept them from aquaplaning on the swamped motorway at the height of the storm. The car was heavily-laden with everything they needed to spend a family Christmas at Lester’s cottage. They were expecting Lester’s brother Ralph, as well as Lyle’s mother and stepfather. The car was crammed with a turkey the size of a small ostrich, plus what looked like half a pig for Boxing Day, a smoked dried ham (without which Lyle insisted no Christmas would be complete) and enough smoked salmon to feed a not-inconsiderable army. There was also enough booze to render the same army entirely insensible. Lester’s insistence that the cottage was hardly running short of supplies had fallen on deaf ears as had his assurance that Tesco in Wells was open throughout the Christmas period.

Neither of them had relished the idea of failing to reach the cottage on time, not when they were within touching distance of a much-prized week off together. With rain lashing against the windscreen and the wind buffeting the car, even Lyle’s usual stream of quips had quickly run dry, unlike the weather, and they’d driven the last hour in silence, broken only by the occasional profanity when something had yet again caused Lyle to take avoiding action.

It had taken them six hours and some interesting detours around fallen trees, downed power lines and the occasional wrecked car, but they’d finally made it, and after a hasty supper and several much-needed beers, they’d fallen into bed, too tired even for the sound of the storm to keep them away.

The following day had brought home the full scale of the floods. Large areas of south Bristol had been swamped, with flood waters rising so fast that some people had only narrowly avoided getting struck in their cars as the relentless waters had risen around them. Homes and businesses were swamped, rivers burst their banks throughout the region and people could wallow to their heart’s content in the time-honoured British pastime of complaining about the weather.

A bad dose of flu had laid several of the usual suspects from their weekend digging team out for the count, so Lyle had loaded a two-metre-long wrecking bar into the Land Rover and insisted they take a look at the sinkhole. They’d been greeted by the sight of swirling brown water completely covering the valley floor. Lyle had cursed fluently in three different languages and ended up wading chest deep into the water in an attempt to locate the grill and force the mat of leaves through the bars with the pole. He’d been partially successful and after spending a lot longer in the water than had been sensible, especially as he hadn’t been wearing caving gear, he’d succeeded in getting the water level to start to drop. After two hours of freezing cold work, the stream was no longer flowing across the road at Black Rock Gate and Lyle had finally admitted there was nothing more he could do. He’d trudged back up to the Land Rover, white with cold. It had taken an hour in a hot bath followed by three hours in front of the woodburning stove to get him even approaching a normal temperature.

Two days later, it was Lester’s turn to get cold and wet. The stream had subsided enough to let them slither down the entrance pipe – a section of road drain set at a 45-degree angle into the earth – and get inside the cave. Friends of theirs had spent the last two years burrowing like moles, aided by industrial quantities of explosives, in an attempt to break through into more passage – the holy grail of all cave-diggers. Lester and Lyle had joined in when time allowed and steady progress through a series of narrow rifts was being made. But if the sink was to have any hope of coping with more floodwater, it was essential to remove as much flood debris as possible, especially the thick mats of leaves that had built up in almost archaeological layers, completely blocking the lower parts of the dig.

At first the compacted leaves had come out fairly easily and Lester had been able to fill the homemade buckets with no trouble, leaving Lyle to drag them back to the bottom of the pipe where a friend on the surface hauled them out with the aid of a winch and deposited the contents downstream of the cave.

As Lester manoeuvred yet another bucket into place he caught a strong whiff of lavender and grinned, despite being freezing cold and fucking knackered. Their latest supply of digging buckets came courtesy of a company in Glastonbury that sold essential oils. They bought the stuff at a knockdown price in bloody great big plastic containers and then decanted it into tiny little bottles and flogged them on at an exorbitant mark-up. Just about every caving club hut on the Mendips now had a mound of empty oil containers just waiting to have their bottoms cut out and rope handles added. Lester couldn’t decide whether he preferred the lavender or the tea tree oil but both were preferable to Eau de Mendip Mud. Even the Land Rover was starting to smell like the inside of a massage parlour.

“Am I entitled to time off for good behaviour, mon petit chou-fleur?” Lester enquired, wondered what the hell his colleagues in the Home Office would think if they could see him now, wearing an old, patched wetsuit, wellington boots, a pair of bright blue washing up gloves and a somewhat battered caving helmet.

“Ten more buckets,” Lyle said. “That’ll make it 100. Can you handle that, sweetie?”

Lester was tempted to point out that a) he was fucking freezing, b) he could no longer feel his hands or feet, and c) there was a stream of cold water running down the back of his neck and d) no, he couldn’t fucking handle it, thank you very much, but his stubborn streak kicked it and he just grabbed another handful of leaves and stuffed them into the latest bucket.

The buckets were getting heavier and harder to manoeuvre now as there was a lot of silt mixed in with the dead leaves, but they were getting close to the end of their self-appointed task. Lyle had taken the first stint underground, dragging out the larger pieces of wood and stones that had been swept down by the flood pulse, but once he’d cleared down through the main rift, they’d had to swap over so that Lester could reach the last of the blocked passages.

Lester was cold, wet, bruised, tired and thoroughly fed up, but with the sharp smell of lavender oil in his nostrils, he kept shoving handfuls of leaves into bucket after bucket, then wriggling far enough back to let Lyle haul on the rope and drag the black buckets away from him while he grabbed the nearest empty one and started the whole miserable process all over again.

“Last one!” Lyle yelled cheerfully, even though he must have been freezing cold as well.

Lester reached as far as he could down the narrow rift and grabbed hold of another handful of leaves. Behind them, he could at least see bare rock. He wriggled backwards and started to add some broken rock to the bucket, courtesy of the last explosive charge that had been set down there. He inched his way backwards, heedless of the sharp rock pressing into his body through the five millimetres of neoprene that was all that stood between him and the interior of the Mendip Hills. He was so bloody cold that every movement was an effort now. He managed to get both hands behind the heavy bucket and push it backwards towards Lyle. The relief when Lyle took its weight and started hauling was enormous, and for a moment, he simply sagged against the rock and fought to get his ragged breathing under control. His heart was pounding in his chest and he would have quite happily exchanged his knighthood for an anomaly leading directly to a hot bath.

The sound of the bucket bumping its way back up the passage spurred Lester into the effort needed to extricate himself from the section of passage known as Triassic Tunnel. He was at the stage where every movement felt like some bugger had attached lead weights to every limb, and the inability to feel his hands wasn’t helping. Inch by painful inch, he made his way backwards into the small chamber where Lyle had been sitting to haul the buckets back up out of the end passage and was at last able to turn around, for the first time in what felt like a lifetime but had actually been less than an hour.

The last obstacle to overcome was the ascent of the entrance rift and then the climb up the plastic pipe. Ordinarily, neither of those things was particularly difficult, but with a stream still pouring down the pipe, the ascent of the rift wasn’t going to be pleasant. Lester could feel his strength starting to ebb, and he was already shivering, his teeth chattering from the cold.

In wet weather, they had a finely-honed routine in place to make the final section of the cave easier. As soon as Lyle caught sight of the light from his headtorch, he would sit at the top of the pipe, using his body to temporarily damn the flow of water underground, allowing Lester to get around the awkward corner at the bottom of the pipe without water pouring on his head. But he would have to be quick, as Lyle wouldn’t be able to hold the water back for long.

Lester dragged in a shaky breath and started to climb the right. Half a metre up, his right boot slipped off a foothold and he dropped back down, banging his elbow on the cave wall as he slid unceremoniously back to where he’d started from. He cursed through his chattering teeth and started to climb again. This time he met with more success, but he was now having problems using his left arm. The thump against the rock had managed to connect with a nerve point… He jammed his shoulders into the tight rift and wriggled, pushing upwards as much as he could, just hoping that his footholds were good.

His breathing was now even more ragged, and he could feel water starting to splash on his helmet. The stream was obviously mounting up around Lyle now and it wouldn’t be long before it was gushing down the entrance pipe again, despite his lover’s best attempts to hold it back. Lester braced himself against the rock again and did his best to get his feet higher up. There was a good foothold here somewhere, he knew it…

With a final heave, Lester got his head through the awkward bend at the top of the rift and his right arm and shoulder quickly followed.

“I don’t want to rush you, James,” Lyle called, “but it’s about to get wet down there…”

Despite his circumstances, Lester grinned. He always knew a situation was serious when Lyle dropped their pet-name game. He was on his last reserves of strength, but he couldn’t let an opportunity like this go to waste.

“It already is wet, my little swamp rat!” he yelled back. “Now keep that fat arse of yours right there for one minute more…”

Lester reached up with his right arm and grabbed one of the rungs of the thin metal ladder that was dangling down the pipe and hauled himself through the constriction just as more water started pouring down the pipe. He got his left hand and arm through and caught hold of a second rung. As the water streamed around him, Lester pulled as hard as he could, kicked out with his feet and scrabbled past the corner and into the plastic pipe. It felt not unlike being flushed around the U-bend in a loo, but Lester could see daylight now and he was out of the tight section. There was no way in hell that he was losing ground now. There was only one way he was going and that was upwards.

He dragged himself hand over hand up the dangling ladder, and as soon as his lover could see that he’d got a firm grip, Lyle pulled himself out of the pipe and let the full force of the stream go, as there was no way Lester could get out while he was blocking the top. Water cascaded around Lester in an icy torrent, but he had a firm hold of the ladder and he knew that all he had to do was hang there for a minute while the backed- up water fell over his head and shoulders, buffeting him from side to side.

As soon as the torrent slowed, Lester started hauling himself up again, rung by rung, until a pair of strong hands slipped under his armpits and hoisted him up the last couple of feet to land him in the stream like a prize salmon.

Lyle grinned down at him. “Game, set and match to you, fruitbat.”

With Lyle’s help, Lester struggled to his feet and stared around in surprise at a light covering of snow on the ground. He looked up at a gunmetal grey sky from which fat white flakes were drifting on a light breeze. It had been bright sunshine when he’d gone down the sinkhole.

“I had 50 quid on a white Christmas,” Lyle said with satisfaction. “Good odds, too.”

Lester accepted a plastic mug of steaming hot coffee heavily laced with brandy and drained it even before he’d climbed out of the stream bed. The digging kit was already packed away, and as soon as the grill had been lowered back into position and chained shut, they started to make their way back up the valley. The snow made the trek even more slippery than usual, and by the time they’d reached the Land Rover, Lester was shivering hard, too cold and knackered to do anything more than climb onto the front seat and wave a frozen hand to their friends as Lyle chucked the digging gear in the back and pulled cautiously onto the already-white road.

****

The snow was falling hard by the time Lyle pulled the Land Rover into the drove road that led to the cottage, but from the wheel marks in the white coverlet, it was obvious that two vehicles had recently driven down the track. It looked like their visitors had arrived.

Lyle pulled up in front of the garage and Lester fumbled with the door handle. His fingers were still numb and his feet were no better. The door was pulled open from the outside and his older brother Ralph grinned at him.

“Bloody hell, Jim, you look like death warmed up!”

“Who said anything about warm?” Lester muttered through clenched teeth.

“And this is why you shouldn’t be allowed nice toys, Jon, you little sod!” a fresh voice exclaimed. “Get the poor boy out of whatever the hell it is he’s wearing before he freezes to death!”

Lester leaned against the Land Rover and held out one foot so that Lyle could haul off his Wellington boot. “Hello, Julia.”

Lyle’s mother shot her offspring a reproving look, kissed Lester on both cheeks, and declared, “You need one of my special hot toddies!

Julie Denton departed in a haze of cigarette smoke, looking even more like the wicked witch from The Wizard of Oz than usual.

Lester laughed weakly. “What goes into her special hot toddies?” he asked.

“Closely guarded secret,” Lyle said, hauling off the second boot and then peeling the wetsuit back from Lester’s shoulders while Ralph stopped him from falling over. “But the smart money’s on a metric fuckton of whisky.”

Between them, Lyle and Ralph quickly stripped him down to his underwear and bundled him into a large towel kept in the garage for après-caving, an activity rather less glamourous than après-ski, but usually involving considerably more alcohol.

“Shower then a long soak in a hot bath,” Lyle declared. “I’ll be up as soon as I’ve sorted the kit.”

With his feet encased in an old pair of slippers, Lester padded into Drove Cottage and shook hands with Henry Rossington, Julia’s fourth husband, a retired investment banker whose personal fortune ran to something over 30 million pounds. Henry was dressed casually in cords, a dilapidated sweater and a pair of slippers that had seen even more wear than the ones Lester had on.

“Have you considered taking up golf instead?” Henry asked. “Or alternatively getting a more civilized boyfriend?”

“Jon tells me I wouldn’t suit the Rupert Bear trousers,” Lester said. “He also tells me I’d miss him if I traded him in for a more user-friendly model. But I must admit, golf is starting to look more attractive by the minute.”

“Get upstairs!” Julia ordered. “I have no desire to break in another would-be son-in-law if you happen to freeze to death.”

“Yes, ma’am…”

Walking upstairs when he still couldn’t feel his feet wasn’t the easiest thing, but Lester finally deposited the old towel and his underwear in the laundry basket, set the hot tap on the bath running, and then stepped into the shower. Warm water cascaded down around him, making Lester almost instantly start to feel more human. Upgrading the plumbing system and hot water delivery at Drove Cottage had been money well spent, especially since Lyle had taken up residence in his life and insisted on him reprising his caving career.

A few moments later, Lyle joined him in the bathroom. After running a small amount of cold water into the bath and adding a large dollop of lavender-scented gel (from the same source as their digging buckets), he declared the bath to be ready. Lester quickly transferred himself from the shower to the bath and slipped thankfully down into the hot, scented water, feeling the warmth start to seep into his body, even though his skin still felt cold to the touch, despite his time in the shower.

Lyle stepped under the jets of water and reached for the gel. “Good job there, sweetie. And at least the snow will give them chance to fix the road. When it thaws, there’ll be plenty of capacity in LVS.”

“And the good folk of Cheddar won’t have to make a massive detour.”

“There were times I was tempted to say sod the good folk of Cheddar, but don’t quote me on that. Even I was getting fucking cold down there.”

A loud knock on the bathroom door heralded the arrival of Julia, a steaming mug in each hand.

Lester winced, and was glad of the small amount of lavender-scented foam that was currently preserving what was left of his modesty.

“Thank you, Julia,” he said as she set both mugs down on the small shelf at the end of the bath.

“For fuck’s sake, mother!” Lyle protested. “You’re not meant to barge in like that, you old harridan!”

“Neither of you have got anything I’ve not seen before, you ungrateful brat,” Julia countered. “Although I have to admit that your cock looks a bit like an albino slug. It’s a good job you’ve already pulled, if that’s all you’ve got to offer.”

Lester snorted with laughter and sat up, reaching for the mug, ignoring the stream of obscenities Lyle’s was currently directing at his wholly unrepentant parent.

“You’re covered in bruises, James,” she pointed out, confirming what he already knew. “You really do need a new hobby.”

“Henry suggested golf.”

“I was thinking more of bridge.”

“Don’t play cards with her,” Lyle warned. “She cheats. Mother, would you please stop ogling my boyfriend. It’s bad manners.”

Julie rolled her eyes. “He’s far too skinny for my taste, brat. And far too bruised.”

Lyle opened the door of the shower enough to reach for his own hot whisky. “Yes, I know, this is why I’m not allowed nice things because I always break them.”

Lester took a sip of the whisky, revelling in the rich scent and the fiery trail it left behind as it slipped down his throat. He sighed appreciatively. “Julia, is there any chance I can persuade you to dump Henry and marry me instead?”

Julia Denton looked down at him and appeared to be giving the matter due consideration.

Lester resisted the urge to cover himself up, deciding it would only look coy.

“Sorry, James darling, there’s this small matter of 40 million quid standing between us….”

“Forty?” queried Lyle from the shower.

“Money breeds money, cherub,” Julia said nonchalantly. “If you’re lucky, we might buy you a packet of dry biscuits and an orange for Christmas. Now drink up, if you’re good boys, you might even get a second one.”

Lester felt he was courting insensibility drinking one, let alone two, but between the hot bath and the even hotter whisky and, he was starting to feel almost human again, rather than doing a passable impersonation of Otzi the Iceman. He slid down in the water, resting the mug on his chest, and closed his eyes. “Thanks, Julia. I won’t have a word said against you. You’re a pearl amongst women.”

“A pearl amongst swine, more like, but you’re too good for that wretched offspring of mine,” Julia declared and exited, slamming the bathroom door behind her.

“Good job we weren’t shagging,” Lyle commented, shutting off the shower and stepping out onto the bathmat as he grabbed a towel from the heated rail. “Someone really needs to instil a sense of public decency into the old bag. You’re going to regret inviting her for Christmas, my little chickadee.”

“Not if she continues making me hot toddies like this.”

“If she keeps making you hot toddies like that, you’ll be unlikely to see Boxing Day.”

“You have a point,” Lester conceded. “Be a dear boy and run some more hot water in for me.” He snagged the plug chain with his toes, letting out some of the now cooling water. “Wake me up when it’s time for canapés, sweetpea.”


	2. Chapter 2

After half an hour and several changes of hot water, Lester finally hauled himself out of the bath and accepted the warm towel Lyle handed him. His lover gave his bruises an appraising glance but pronounced that he’d seen worse, which was probably true. Lester still remembered the ones imprinted on his flesh by the Devil’s Crowll. By comparison, even LVS paled into insignificance.

Lester pulled on a pair of old cords, a warm shirt topped off with a cashmere sweater, and the cashmere socks Lyle had bought him for his birthday. He’d had more than enough of being cold for one day. A glance out of the window showed that the snow was still falling and had probably rendered most of the roads in the area undriveable by anything other than a 4 x 4. Maybe Lyle’s insistence on stocking up with enough food to feed the 5,000, as well as all their friends and relatives, hadn’t been misplaced after all. But it was a good job that they had two spare fridges in the garage, as neither Ralph nor their guests had come empty-handed.

The woodburning stove was pumping out heat, and Ralph was in the process of taking a tray out of the Aga.

“Pigs in blankets!” his brother declared, handing around plates while Henry popped the cork from a bottle and expertly filled five glasses without spilling so much as a drop.

Lester took an appreciative sip, recognising an exceedingly good sparkling wine from Camel Valley in Cornwall. Ralph had been lecturing at the Camborne School of Mines and had come to Mendip via Bodmin.

“There’s six cases in the garage,” Lyle commented. “Your brother is a gentleman and a scholar, wombat, and I won’t hear a word said against him. He does a good line in pig products, too.”

Lyle was right, the small pork sausages wrapped in pancetta were excellent, and eating them on Christmas Eve had been a Lester family tradition for years. Ralph lived a somewhat nomadic lifestyle most of the year, as his services as a consultant mine engineer were in demand throughout the world, but when he was home, he was quite happy pottering around in the kitchen. The enormous turkey had already been prepared and put into the Aga’s slow-oven to cook overnight, and in a little while they were going to indulge in a non-traditional evening meal of smoked salmon and home-made chips, courtesy of the deep fat fryer that Lyle had insisted on buying, but by way of compromise, had agreed to install it in the garage, underneath an open window.

Lyle and Ralph quickly started to produce a steady stream of golden chips, crisp on the outside and fluffy inside, accompanied by smoke salmon and cream cheese rolls. Julia claimed that a sprinkle of lemon juice and some freshly ground black pepper turned the whole thing into a healthy meal, and Lester certainly wasn’t going to argue, not when the result tasted that good.

While he’d been in the bathroom, Ralph had even festooned the main room in several strings of battery-powered fairy lights, some silver, some multi-coloured, and a small Christmas tree had found its way into the corner of the room and was looking distinctly over-dressed with various bright baubles, more lights and some strands of tinsel. It probably wouldn’t win any prizes for tasteful decoration, but it looked cheerful.

Lester sat at one end of a battered leather sofa, his feet drawn up next to him, as he finished his chips and wondered if he could find room for two more pigs in blankets.

“There’ll be none to have cold for breakfast if you keep pigging out now,” Lyle said reprovingly.

“Yes, there will. Ralph always cooks a spare tray for exactly that reason.”

“A gentleman and a scholar,” Lyle repeated. “And he has exceedingly good taste in fizzy wine. But you know perfectly well you snore when you’ve eaten too much. Especially when you lie on your back.”

“Keep your bedroom secrets to yourselves, boys,” Julia said, rolling her eyes theatrically.

“You’ll find out soon enough, mother dearest. You’re in the room next to ours.”

“I’m hoping my presence will cock-block the pair of you.”

“Mother! Will you stop talking about cocks! I can’t take you anywhere.” Lyle threw himself down on the sofa next to Lester and said plaintively, “She did this at my passing out parade at Sandhurst.”

“Talked about cocks?”

“Did her best to fucking embarrass me. And then she copped off with my RSM.”

“In my defence, I was between husbands at the time,” Julia said, a wicked grin tugging at the corner of her mouth. “And if we’re talking about cocks, his was….”

Lyle put his hands over his ears and looked aggrieved when both Lester and Ralph burst out laughing. “Don’t encourage her,” he moaned. “Henry, when you divorce her, I hope you’ll remember what a nice stepson I’ve been and not write me out of your will.”

Before Henry could answer, Julia said, “Jon, you’re scratching your thumbs.”

Lyle looked down, almost as if the statement had caught him by surprise. “It’s only a slight itch,” he said defensively. “I was hoping it might go away.”

“So much for a quiet few days off,” Lester commented, reaching for his mobile phone. He keyed in the number for the ARC, but all that he got was a continuous tone that didn’t bode well for communication. Without speaking, Ralph tossed him the handset for the landline. The ARC was on speed dial, but he didn’t even get that far. He couldn’t raise so much as a dialling tone.

“Whatever it is can’t be very far away if it’s affecting mobile reception,” Lester said, his mind already racing. “But what about the landline?”

“Could have been brought down by the snow,” Ralph said, staring out of the window. “It’s still coming down out there.”

“Jon, what kit have you got here?” Lester asked.

Lyle was already on his feet and moving towards the gun case bolted to the wall under the stairs. “Two EMPs, a Glock, an M4 and a Mossberg 590. I’ll get them.”

“Were you expecting trouble?” Henry’s arm had tightened protectively around Julia’s shoulders. His wife’s experiences with anomalies hadn’t been good ones.

“We had an anomaly cluster near here in the summer. It can take a while to get a team down here from the ARC so we prefer to be prepared.”

“What do you want us to do?” Julia demanded.

“Stay here and stay out of trouble,” Lyle said. He was already removing weaponry from the safe.

Lester grabbed a thick jacket and a pair of boots from the porch and pulled on a fleece hat. As Ralph had said, the snow was falling fast. Lyle handed him the M4 and four spare magazines of ammunition. The soldier strapped the EMP pistol to his thigh and slung the combat shotgun over his shoulder. The EMP rifle he handed to Ralph and gave him a rapid series of instructions on how to use it. Ralph, used to working in many of the world’s trouble spots was confident with both rifles and handguns. Lyle gave the Glock to his mother. Julia, had reported from several war zones in her career and knew one end of a weapon from another, whereas Henry, on his own admission, knew nothing about guns.

“I have a set of golf clubs in the car, Jon,” he said.

Lyle grinned. He approved of improvised weapons. Two minutes later, Henry was equipped with his clubs and had been given instructions to keep all doors and windows closed and stay on guard. Julia had earned herself an approving look from her offspring by dropping the magazine out of the Glock, checking it before clicking it back into place then racking the slide to deliver a round to the breech.

“Double action trigger, no safety, mother,” Lyle said.

She executed an eye-roll that put Lester’s own efforts to shame. “Don’t worry, brat, I won’t stick it down the waistband of my trousers.”

The last piece of equipment Lyle took from the weapons’ cabinet was one of Connor’s handheld anomaly detection devices. He powered it up and passed it to Lester. “I’ll cover you once we’re outside. If we find one, at least with the snow we’ll know if anything’s come through.”

“Unless it’s flying.”

“We’ll worry about that later.”  
All three of them pulled on headtorches over fleece hats and Lester and Lyle turned on the torches mounted on their weapons. Outside the cottage, the snow swirled on a freezing wind, dancing in the torchlight and making it difficult to judge distance. Lester looked down at the handheld detector. It had already started to emit a high-pitched bleep, a bit like the parking sensor in his Merc.

“There’s one close by,” he said, staring down at the screen. “No more than 250 metres away.” He pointed across the piece of land that belonged to Drove Cottage. “That way, towards the swallet.”

The cottage was blocking their view, but from the screen in his hand, he knew exactly where the anomaly was. The cottage came complete with its own swallet, an ancient sinkhole in the pockmarked landscape of the Mendip Hills. The sunken feature was surrounded by trees but no stream had run there for thousands of years. Athough it looked no more than a grassy depression, with no obvious place to dig, he and Ralph had often talked about starting to prospect for cave there, and Lyle was enthusiastic, but as yet they’d never managed to find the time.

Lester hung the detector around his neck to leave both hands free to handle the M4 carbine and cautiously, they advanced through the narrow gap in the drystone wall surrounding the garden and made their way into the field.

“It’s in the fucking swallet,” Lyle said quietly. “On the count of three, turn your lights off so we can check.”

They were a long way from any street lighting and as soon as they turned their own torches off, they were plunged into darkness. Lester blinked, adjusting to the sudden change, then through the snow, he started to see an eerie white glow behind the whirling flakes coming from the direction of the swallet.

At Lyle’s signal, they turned their torches back on and advanced carefully, sweeping the ground in front of them in search of tracks. In all directions, the snow was unbroken apart from their own tracks. But Lester knew better than to count his chickens too soon where anomalies were concerned. With the sound of his own breathing loud in his ears, he did his best to stay focussed on the task in hand.

They advanced in line, keeping some distance between them, and making sure they each had line of sight ahead without being in anyone’s field of fire is something came at them from in front.

Over the noise of the wind, Lester heard a sudden bellowing cry, sounding like a cow in distress.

They quickened their steps to the edge of the swallet. The edge nearest to them was bare of trees, and in the ghost-light cast by the anomaly, they could see the almost perfectly circular depression, about sixty feet across, and thirty feet deep. On the far side, where the trees clustered densely on the ground above, the slope was almost vertical.

At the bottom, a creature the size of a large bull was threshing around in the snow trying to dislodge something clinging to its back. The beam of their torches picked out a shaggy shape, stamping large hairy feet and crying out in distress. A long trunk thrashed from side to side and Lester realised he was staring down at a young mammoth.

“What the fuck is that on its back?” Lyle demanded.

Lester didn’t know. It looked like the creature was being attacked by some sort of large, hairless ape that had its fingers – claws? – fisted in the mammoth’s thick hair.

“Oh shit…”

As they looked down, a figure ran out from beside the anomaly and jabbed at the ape-like creature with a spear. Lester realised to his horror that they were looking down on what could well be one of their own ancestors. The anomaly teams had been briefed countless times on the need to avoid contact with hominins of all types. Contact was sometimes inevitable, but it was certainly to be avoided, if at all possible.

The young mammoth threw its head back, bellowing in distress.

The fur-clad figure thrust its spear at the creature clinging to the mammoth’s back. The spear pint came close, but the ape-like creature swept a long, bony arm to one side and ripped the spear out of its assailant’s grasp.

In the light from the anomaly, Lester caught a glimpse of the figure’s face and realised he was looking down on a boy, in his early teens, if the beardless face was anything to go by.

Lyle, realising the same thing and swore under his breath. “Can’t get a clear shot at whatever it is. I’m going to try to get closer. Keep an eye out for anything else coming out of there and cover me. Check for tracks. We need to know if anything has come out of the depression.”

At Lester’s side, Ralph stared down at the battle taking place below them with the expression of a man who thought he was dreaming. With a visible effort, his brother said, “What the fuck do I do, Jim?”

“Cover my back!” Lester told him. “And don’t let anything get past you.”

Below him, unfazed by the loss of his weapon, the boy flung himself at the creature and tried to drag it from the young mammoth’s back. The creature turned and raked at the boy with long claws.

Lyle drew in a sharp intake of breath. “Ryan’s report from Roque St Christophe! It’s one of those fucking predator things!”

Lester stared in horror at the scene unfolding below him. He knew the report Lyle meant. The one from Ryan and Stephen’s interrupted holiday in the French countryside. By agreement with their colleagues in France, they’d received one of the corpses for dissection and study. Cutter and Connor had been all over it like a rash. The creature was a highly-developed predator that hunted its prey by echo-location. Bizarre as it sounded, Connor thought the things might be descended from bats. He had no idea what one of them was doing at an anomaly site that had also disgorged a young mammoth, but they couldn’t discount the possibility of another anomaly on the far side of the one they were looking at or even a portal to something the spaghetti junction of anomalies accessed via the permanently open anomaly at Farnleigh Hall.

Lyle slithered down the slope into the depression, his combat shotgun held firmly in his hands.

The young mammoth was trampling the snow beneath its hooves as it turned in circles, trying to dislodge its unwelcome passenger. The boy had jumped up and grabbed hold of the predator’s bony leg and was trying hard to haul it off its prey. Why he was quite so concerned to protect the mammoth, Lester didn’t know. They might have been both competing for the same prey, for all he knew, although he had to admit it didn’t seem likely from the attempts the boy was making to drag the creature off.

The predator turned and swiped at the boy with long claws. A cry of pain told Lester that the predator had obtained the upper hand in that exchange.

Without warning, the mammoth dropped to the floor of the depression and Lester wondered if it had taken a mortal injury, but a moment later he realised it was simply an attempt to dislodge the creature from its back by rolling and hoping to crush its opponent. The predator jumped free and Lyle seized the moment to fire.

The sound of the Mossberg 590 was deafeningly loud. Dark blood blossomed on the trampled snow, but whether it came from the predator, the boy or the mammoth, Lester couldn’t tell.

As Lyle moved closer to the melee, Lester realised the anomaly was shimmering in the manner he knew indicated that something was about to come through. He raised his rifle to his shoulder and tied to stop his hands from shaking with the cold. A dark shape burst through. He hesitated, then, as the creature barrelled forwards, he knew he was looking at another of the predators. Nothing human moved with that kind of bounding lope. He snapped off a three-round burst, but had no idea if any of his shots had reached their goal. The creature came towards him with a terrifying turn of speed. He fired again and heard the crackle of an electric charge in the air as Ralph tried to bring it down with the EMP rifle.

Neither weapon had any effect.

The predator bounded away, clearing the drystone wall in one springing leap.

“Try to stop anything else getting past,” Lester said quickly. “Do what you can but don’t risk hitting Jon with a charge from that thing. It’ll lay him out.”

“Jim…”

“I’ll be all right,” he lied, knowing Ralph didn’t believe him, but they couldn’t take the risk of the creature getting in to the cottage or, even worse, getting away from the immediate area of the anomaly. He’d read the reports and knew exactly how dangerous the fucking things were, and even with the aid of an M4 carbine, he didn’t feel confident. This was Lyle’s sort of work, not his…

The rapidly-deepening slow hindered his movements, but Lester pressed on, doing his best to ignore another shotgun report from the depression. Lyle could look after himself. He had to believe that.

The beam of the torch mounted under his rifle barrel picked out picked out the movement of a dark shape ahead of him. Lester knew he had no chance of bringing the predator down from that distance so he simply kept moving as quickly as he could. As far as he could see, it was heading straight for the cottage. The sickening thought struck him that it was being drawn in by the light from the windows…

Lester caught sight of movement towards the front of the cottage then, to his horror, he saw a sudden shaft of light fall across the snow-covered garden as the door opened. The creature bounced off the front wall, leapt onto the roof of the porch and then jumped down. Another shape moved out of the shadow of the porch and Lester heard the sharp, unmistakeable crack of breaking bone. His stomach gave a sickening lurch. A heartbeat later, the sound of a pistol shot came from beside the cottage and cut through the noises coming from the depression, but a heartbeat later, the boom of Lyle’s combat shotgun split the air again and then there was silence.

****

Lester stared down at the bloodied mess in his front garden.

Henry had a golf club in his hands and Julia was pointing the Glock 17 at the dead body of the creature. The look on both their faces was that of people who were just glad to be alive.

One of the predator’s claws opened and closed.

Julia shot it again at point blank range. “I hope you’re not going to tell me it was harmless, James,” she said, not quite managing to disguise the tremor in her voice.

“I have it on good authority they’re fucking lethal,” he said, wondering if he should stick a three-round burst into it, just to be sure, but as it didn’t have much of a head left, he decided that wouldn’t be needed. “Henry, did you just hit it with that golf-club?”

Henry nodded. “Lucky shot right between the eyes.”

“I think I might have changed my mind about taking up golf.”

Henry smiled in satisfaction. “Shall we see if Jon needs any help?”

Henry and Julia has just taken down a highly-evolved predator with the aid of a golf club and a handgun. Telling them to go back into the dubious safety of the cottage would seem like too much of an insult in the circumstances, so Lester just nodded and turned back towards the depression.

“Jon’s all right,” Ralph said quickly as they approached.

“Good, I’d hate to lose him now he’s almost house-trained,” Lester said as lightly as he could manage.

Keeping a wary eye on the anomaly, they made their way down the slope. They arrived in time to see the young boy leaning against the shoulder of the young mammoth, running his hands down its thick, russet coloured coat. The mammoth snorted quietly and snuffled at the boy with its trunk. The boy looked at them warily, but had clearly established some sort of rapport with Lyle.

Lyle looked over at them and raised his eyebrows. “What part of stay inside and stay out of trouble wasn’t clear, mother?”

“The part where you omitted to mention something even uglier than you staring in the window with blood dripping off its fangs.”

Lyle winced.

Julia smiled wolfishly. “It’s all right, brat. Henry caved its skull in with his golf bat…”

“Club,” Henry corrected.

“Don’t interrupt, darling. And then I blew its brains out. Twice. But apart from a nasty mess in the front garden, we didn’t break anything, which is probably fortunate. Even Henry isn’t rich enough to pay the call out fee for an emergency glazier on Christmas Eve.”

The boy looked puzzled and the mammoth loudly blew snot out of its nostrils.

“That’s nice, mother,” Lyle said weakly.

The boy stepped away from the mammoth’s side, a short-bladed flint knife in his hand. He gestured to dead predator and said something that Lester couldn’t understand.

Lyle stepped back and gestured at the body in what he clearly hoped was a universal gesture for ‘be my guest.’

Their visitor dropped to one knee in the snow then quickly and efficiently severed the head from the body. With an underarm action that would have stood him in good stead in a bowls match, the boy lobbed the head through the anomaly. He stood up, calmly rubbing the blood from his fingers with a handful of snow. He gestured to the body, then to Lyle, clearly indicating that Lyle was welcome to keep the rest.

Lyle grinned. “Thanks, mate.” He looked around. “We need to give him something in return. But I think Cutter might whinge if I give him a steel knife.”

Julia shrugged off her large, white fake fur coat and held it out to the boy. He was wearing what looked to be a fur parka, but when he ran his hand down the synthetic fur, a look of incredulous delight crossed his face and he held the coat to him.

“I imagine the Eccentric Academic won’t be too pleased about that, either,” Lester said dryly. “But I imagine we can gloss over that in the report.”

The mammoth reached out to lightly touch the white fur with the sensitive end of its trunk. The boy grinned and lightly swatted away the questing trunk.

Behind them, the anomaly flickered and the boy cast a quick look, thoughtful look at it. He patted the young mammoth on the shoulder and pointed at the anomaly. The creature stepped forward into the light. The boy looked at them all, a wide grin on his face. Lyle held out his hand, palm up. The boy touched his hand to Lyle’s and then turned to follow the mammoth back through the anomaly.

Henry draped his jacket around Julia’s shoulders and together the four of them stood in the depression and waited for the anomaly to fade from sight, their weapons held in readiness, just in case of any more unwelcome visitors.

When the light finally faded then winked out altogether, Ralph let out a shaky breath and said, “At the risk of sounding like a teenager, that was fucking awesome.”

“Even the bit where we all nearly died horribly?” Lester said, knowing exactly how his brother was feeling.

“Yes, even that bit.”

Lyle shook his head in disbelief. “I get paid to deal with this shit. The rest of you are just fucking bonkers. Now someone go get a tarpaulin from the garage to deal with what’s left of this ugly sod while I check the area for tracks.”

Two hours later, the bodies of the two predators had been wrapped in tarpaulins and secured with rope before being stowed in a lean-to shed at the back of the cottage. To prevent them starting to smell, they were packed around with snow. It was heavy work and they were all sweating by the time they’d finished, despite the rapidly-dropping temperature. By the time they’d finished, Lyle had declared the area free of any other visitors and they retired inside Drove Cottage, leaving boots, coats and hats to drip in the porch.

Lester looked at his watch. It was nearly midnight. He slipped an arm around Lyle’s waist and pulled him close for a cold-nosed kiss. “Happy Christmas”

Lyle returned the kiss. “Happy Christmas.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “How about cold climate animals for the rest of December and January?”

“Sounds good, my little snow panda…”

Lyle stared at him suspiciously, not knowing whether he had made that one up or not.

Lester smiled his best inscrutable dealing-with-idiot-ministers smile.

“Hot toddies coming up!” Julia called from the kitchen.

“And more pigs in blankets!” Ralph added.

Lester rested his head against Lyle’s shoulder and let the smile morph into a grin. “Maybe our families aren’t that bad after all.” He glanced at Henry, who had cleaned his golf club and was just sliding it back into its bag in the porch. “Is that offer to teach me golf still open? I’m always in favour of transferable skills.”


End file.
